


Waking From Winter

by Aceflyheight



Series: Tales of the Multi-verse [2]
Category: No Fandom, Original Work, Unspecified Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Anxiety, Aromantic, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Asexuality Spectrum, Bisexual Character, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexuality, Bonding, Drama, Family, Female Protagonist, Female-Centric, Friendship, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Themes, Lesbian Character, Male Protagonist, Mental Health Issues, Mercenaries, Multi, Non-binary character, Novel, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, POV Female Character, POV Male Character, POV Multiple, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relationship(s), Science Fiction, Social Anxiety, Stimming, Survivor Guilt, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 20:25:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6254605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aceflyheight/pseuds/Aceflyheight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2008, Jane Howard, Kaitlyn Hutchins, Nicole Morgan, and Jessi Reynolds–as well as 40% of the inhabitants of the pre-incident Southern United States–were the only survivors of an event that became known as the Second American Revolution. The destruction and socioeconomic fallout from the event was relatively contained within the borders of the southern region of the United States.</p><p>In the four years since the event, the inhabitants of the region have attempted to do what they can to rebuild their shattered lives. Some have managed. Some have not. Others like Jane and the ones that fought alongside her back then cling to what little remains of their lives pre-incident and have to struggle to deal with what each new day brings them.</p><p>Full summary is in a note at the beginning of the first chapter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking From Winter

**Author's Note:**

> Full summary:
> 
> In 2008, Jane Howard, Kaitlyn Hutchins, Nicole Morgan, and Jessi Reynolds–as well as 40% of the inhabitants of the pre-incident Southern United States–were the only survivors of an event that became known as the Second American Revolution. The destruction and socioeconomic fallout from the event was relatively contained within the borders of the southern region of the United States.
> 
> In the four years since the event, the inhabitants of the region have attempted to do what they can to rebuild their shattered lives. Some have managed. Some have not. Others like Jane and the ones that fought alongside her back then cling to what little remains of their lives pre-incident and have to struggle to deal with what each new day brings them.
> 
> In December of 2012, that all changed. Jane met a young man by the name of Isaac Ellsworth. From there, Jane’s life was changed with a single gesture as she took her first steps beyond the looking-glass that surrounded the bubble of her life post-incident and into a new world of infinite possibilities. A world where she could become something different and separate herself from her current existence as long as she was willing to accept the future consequences of her actions in her new life.

Part I

Whispers of Tomorrow

 

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”

— Robert Frost

  

 

 

Chapter 01

~December 07, 2012~

_‘Her eyes met mine as she raised her blood soaked hands and the weight of what I’d done finally hit me…’_

Jane stared at the words that she had just written before marking through all of them and sighing. No. No. No. Per her track record with luck, she’d tried her hand at starting a journal and the first thing that she’d written was related to back _then_.

With a small scoff, she roughly stuffed the notebook in her bag and listened as the professor continued to drone on about the Second American Revolution. After a few minutes, Jane felt herself beginning to drift off and she slowly closed her eyes as she lowered her head to the coolness of the wooden desk.

_A gunshot._

_Blood._

_“Nicole, we’ve got to go!”_

_“Nathan, you…you…”_

_The rain coming down harder._

_There._

_Just a little further._

“ _Miss_ Howard!” the professor suddenly called out followed by Jane quickly jerking her head up.

With a frenzied look, she snapped her eyes around at the class as she tried to figure out what happened only to realize that she must have fallen asleep… _again_. She rubbed at her blood-shot green eyes for a moment before she tried to make eye contact with the professor only to fail as her eyes focused on the poster on the wall just to the left of the professor.

“Glad to see that you finally decided to join us. Now, do you remember what happened at the Siege of Birmingham during the Second American Revolution?”

Jane couldn’t believe it. Of all the stupid questions that he could think of to ask. She pushed that thought away though and tried to focus on deciding what she should give as her answer. On the one hand, she could give them the truth and possibly see herself in front of a firing squad come first light tomorrow morning for treason. On the other hand, she could give them the lie that had been beaten into everyone’s skulls for the past four years. In the end, she decided to go with the lie like she always had in public for the past four years. After all, if nothing else, it at least gave her a chance to see the sun rise the next morning.

She took a deep breath and mentally braced herself as she began to give her answer–making sure to watch how fast she said each word as well as listening to how her voice sounded with each word. After all, the last thing that she needed right then was to give anybody else on campus any more ammunition considering her crappy luck throughout the semester so far. “The city of Birmingham came under attack and had a good portion of its population wiped out in just the matter of a few hours. The city itself though managed to keep from falling. Students at the UAB School of Medicine helped prepare not only an escape route for the remaining population but also a plan for a counterattack. In the end, with the help of the remaining population that was still inside the city limits, they managed to push back the attack and were able to take the city back under our full control,” she said before mentally sighing with relief as she finished without stuttering or talking too fast like she always had a bad habit of doing…and somehow without raising her hands from the surface of her desk either. Maybe her luck was finally changing…doubtful though. It was probably just a fluke.

The professor blinked in surprise for a moment before coughing behind his hand and turning back towards the presentation that he was giving as a so-called ‘early Christmas present’ to the class. “Right. Well, let’s move on then to the battle of Atlanta.”

Jane rolled her eyes a little as the professor began to drone on again. She couldn’t help but wonder just how many of the people in the room with her honestly didn’t have a clue about what really happened to the entire damn region over four years ago. As far as she was concerned, the ones that hadn’t moved to the area until after the incident didn’t have the right to be there on that bloodstained ground–not after what Jane herself and everyone else in the region had been through. She shook her head though as she remembered that she didn’t need to think that way. She needed to try to keep her mind off of what happened back then and off of the people around her.

She glanced down at her hands only to notice that they were shaking–which wasn’t anything new–and covered in blood–which _was_. “Gah!” she yelped almost as if she’d been struck with a cattle prod as she wiped her hands against her blue jeans over and over and over and over and over, trying to get the _blood_ off only for–

“Miss Howard, is something wrong?”

–the professor to _calmly_ ask if something was wrong as he observed Jane’s little _‘outburst’_.

Jane wanted to scream that her hands were covered in blood. She wanted to scream for the professor to simply open his eyes and _look._ Instead, that particular train of thought quickly derailed as she glanced back down at her hands only to realize that there wasn’t even so much as a _drop_ of blood on them. “No–no, I’m okay. Just–just thought that I saw–saw something on my hands,” she replied–her voice quickly dropping in pitch a little before she was able to focus on raising it back up–as she hid her hands underneath the desk and began to tap out the entirety of ‘ _Hell’s Bells_ ’ by AC/DC on her right wrist as she tried to calm herself down. She tried to tell herself that she had just been hallucinating. Just a simple hallucination. Just her mind playing tricks on her. Nothing more or less than that.

She took a deep breath and paused in her tapping before she dug her old Sony Walkman MP3 player out of her pocket, placed an ear bud in each ear, and pressed the shuffle button. Even with the noise blaring into her ears though, she could still all too easily hear the whispers of her classmates and just wished that they would shut up. They didn’t though and after a few moments, she could begin to make out individual words such as ‘psycho’, ‘freak’, and even ‘retard’. To make things worse, she _knew_ that the ‘freak’ comment went even deeper than just being a remark about her outburst a moment ago. After all, it wasn’t as if her little outburst had been a once in a lifetime show for her classmates. It had sadly become akin to a running gag that was popcorn worthy if only her classmates had prior warning for her outbursts. She glanced downward at the blouse that she was wearing and sighed as she remembered back near the beginning of the semester when somebody in the administration had looked through some of her records and spread what they had found around campus. She shook her head after a moment and tried to push the memory away as she hoped that the professor would end class soon so that she could just get back home and away from everybody.

Eventually, Jane lucked out as the professor finally turned off the projector for the presentation and turned to face the class as he gave his customary closing remarks. “Well, here it is: the end of the semester and the beginning of Winter Break. I just want to say that it has been an interesting semester with each of you and that I will be here for about the next hour if anyone wants to discuss his or her grades. Otherwise, you are dismissed and I’ll see some of you in the spring.”

In an instant, Jane was up from her seat and already going through her normal end of class routine as fast as she could: taking her ear buds out, slipping her old Oilskin Drover duster coat over her shoulders, grabbing her messenger bag, and placing her old worn dark brown felt fedora over her brown and nearly waist-length braided hair. With a relieved smile as she adjusted the fedora a little, she walked out of the class only to find herself right in the middle of what looked like the entirety of the student body for the school. She sighed and took a deep breath as she made her way through the crowd and eventually managed to get out of the lobby only to stop and stare as she walked smack-dab into the middle of a snow flurry.

After a moment, she took a second step into the already ankle-deep snow before she stopped and patted down her pockets. She cursed as she realized that she had left her campus ID back in the lounge before her last class.

She sighed and made her way back inside the building while taking her phone out and dialing a number. As she waited for the other person to finally answer, she tried to focus her mind on remembering exactly where in the lounge that she could have left her ID.

“ _Hello?_ ”

“It’s me, mom,” she replied and tried to remember when she had begun to call Kaitlyn’s mom ‘mom’ instead of ‘Mrs. Hutchins’. One year back? Two years back? She wasn’t sure.

“ _Jane! How’d class go?_ ”

She began to open her mouth only to realize that she didn’t know what to say. On one hand, she could tell her about what happened in class, but she knew how worried she’d be about her if she told her about it. She thought about it for a moment longer before she decided what she would say.

“It went fine. What I called for was to let you know that I’m planning on staying over at my house for the next couple of days.”

“ _I caught the first part, but what did you say that you were calling for?_ ”

Jane took a deep breath and tried to focus on each word as she repeated herself, making sure that she didn’t talk too fast this time, “I said that I was calling to let you know that I’m planning on staying over at my house for the next couple of days.”

“ _Oh okay. Do you have your–_ ”

“I do. I dropped by the pharmacy here on campus earlier today and picked up everything but the anxiety meds. I’ve still got enough of those at the house to last another two weeks or so.”

“ _Okay, just making sure._ ”

“By the way, how are Jessi and Willow doing?”

“ _Jessi’s doing great. All A’s this semester. Same goes for Kaitlyn,_ ”

“Glad to hear it…and uh, is Jessi still having nightmares?”

“ _Yes, but not nearly as much as she used to thank goodness._ ”

“Thank god…well, I’m gonna be leaving campus in a few minutes so I’ll call again later. Tell Willow and Jessi both _‘hi’_ for me, all right?”

“ _All right._ ”

“And by the way, before I forget. Could you please remind Willow about the convention in two days?”

“ _Sure._ ”

“Okay. Bye.”

“ _Bye._ ”

She smiled a little as she pocketed her phone as she reached the second floor and began to walk through the door to the lounge only to stop as she accidentally smacked her shoulder against the side of the door. “Damn it Jane, you’re supposed to watch where you’re going. That includes remembering to not get too close to a frickin’ door or wall with your shoulders,” she said to herself as she realized that she’d have yet another bruise on that shoulder by the next day to add to her ‘crappy collection of spatial awareness mishaps’. She sighed after a moment and began to search for her ID. She found the elusive thing after a few minutes and placed it in her coat pocket as she left the lounge only to stop as a low buzzing noise began to vibrate inside her head before suddenly changing to more of a high-pitched _screech_. She couldn’t help the yelling that issued forth from her lips as she fell to her knees within a matter of seconds before the sound quickly stopped. By the time that she managed to get back to her feet and calm her mind down though, she could swear that she could hear someone coughing from the nearby computer room. As she reached the room though, she was suddenly speechless…but, only for just a moment. “What…the…hell?”

In the far corner of the now-scorched room was a young man who looked to be about the same age as her at her current twenty-one mumbling something about having a headache and fiddling with some kind of gadget that was currently clasped in his hands. “Come on, work you stupid thing.”

Jane watched for a moment as the young man continued to talk to himself before slowly brushing his left hand through his short curly black hair in exasperation as his hazel eyes continued to focus on the object. Just as she was about to make her way to him though, the scent of burnt plastic and electronics hit her nose and it took everything that she had to keep from coughing and gagging. The feeling finally passed eventually though and she took several steps towards him until she was right behind him. “Need some help with that?” she asked before grimacing as she heard the guy _squeak_ of all things and realized that she had spooked the poor guy by accident.

“I–I–uh–oh, uh…hmm? Oh…oh, thanks, but it’s nothing that you can fix,” he replied–the words coming out as a jumbled mess before he suddenly slapped the side of the object only for it to give off one last beep before seemingly shutting down of its own accord. “Damn it,” he mumbled, sighing before suddenly standing up to his full height and giving Jane a chance to gauge his height at around 5’4”–which put the man at about eight inches shorter than her. After a moment, he brushed some dust and broken glass off the buttoned-up leather trench coat that he was wearing before glancing at Jane–in particular, at the faded scars that were visible on the right side of her face even through her makeup. “So, what’s your name anyway?”

“Oh, Jane Howard,” she replied, her left hand making random gestures with each syllable without her realizing it.

“Jane…nice name. Mine’s Isaac…Isaac Ellsworth,” he said before pausing as he extended his hand out to Jane, “it’s nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” she replied as she shook his outreached hand and reminded herself to smile before she let go of his hand. Not a moment later though, she mentally kicked herself for forgetting about the current condition of the once pristine computer lab. “Okay, now look, we’ve got to go before somebody catches us in here,” she said as she gestured towards the fried electronics in the room.

“Why…oh yeah,” he replied as he seemed to notice the damage that he had accidentally caused before Jane had made her entrance into the room, “all right, lead the way.”

She couldn’t help but stare at Isaac for a moment as those words hit her ears. What did he mean by ‘ _lead the way_ ’? He should at least know where he was, right? Regardless, she left the room with Isaac at her side–intent on hopefully getting at least to the parking lot before anybody discovered the scorched computer lab. They eventually did make it to the parking lot without being caught though and Jane spent a moment looking around, trying to find her truck in the snow flurry.

“Thanks for getting me out of there.”

“No problem. So, I guess that we’re gonna part ways now. I suppose that you can make it to your vehicle, right? Well, I’ll be seeing you around then,” Jane said, her hands making several quick gestures on their own to try to keep up with how fast she was talking as she continued to focus on her mental map of the parking lot and tried to remember where she had parked. South end? No, that was yesterday. North end? Yeah, that was it. North end, third row from the west side stop sign.

“No offense, but–”

“I spoke too fast, didn’t I? Yeah, I sort of have a tendency of doing that. Sorry,” she said before she repeated what she said earlier again followed by Isaac nodding this time.

“Oh okay, but um…Jane, you know how you offered to help me earlier…well, is that offer still open?”

She blinked and stood there for a moment. Had she heard him right? He wanted to take her up on her offer? She thought about it for a moment. She _had_ offered her help earlier, but she didn’t know anything about this person. Maybe she could at least hear him out though.

“Um yeah sure, I suppose that it is still open. What do you need help with?” she asked as the two of them began walking towards the north end of the parking lot where her truck should be.

“Well…I know that this is probably going to sound weird but–”

“Trust me when I say that I’ve probably dealt with things much weirder,” she said before grimacing just a little as she remembered her ‘rules for conversation’. In particular, she remembered her little rule number four: ‘don’t interrupt other people when they’re talking’. Leave it to her to screw up so early in a conversation.

“Okay, here we go,” Isaac began after a moment of silence as he tried to explain what he needed help with, “I’m actually a traveler from another world that came here–to this building to be precise–by complete accident. I was supposed to run a small reconnaissance mission on Solaris IV, but somehow my transporter malfunctioned and sent me here instead. That’s what that stupid device was that I was trying to fix when we met earlier and well…I’m sort of stuck here now until I can get it fixed.”

“Oh…well, all right, I’ve got a place where you can stay for a while until you get that transporter back in working condition,” she replied as they reached her truck.

Isaac stared at her for what felt like forever to each of them before he finally nodded. Jane had to admit that a part of her was actually surprised at the fact that Isaac actually nodded instead of at the very least asking her why she seemed to so easily believe his story. Regardless, she mentally shook her head as the two of them climbed into her truck and began the long drive back to her house in complete silence–which only lasted for about thirty minutes or so.

“…um, hey…why did you believe my story earlier?”

“Well, it’s just like I said earlier. I’ve already faced my share of weird so your _‘weird’_ story is nothing more than another drop in the bucket for me,” she replied. Although she did have to admit that Isaac’s story was definitely not something that she had ever expected to happen…well, at least not in her lifetime. Of course, considering what happened back in March those four years ago, maybe she should not have been that surprised about anything anymore.

“Speaking of which, what kind of _‘weird’_ are you talking about anyway?”

“Sorry Isaac, but I can’t tell you. It’s a secret that I agreed to carry to my grave.”

“Oh…by the way, um, sorry if this is kind of personal but what was up with your hand gestures back in the lab? It almost looked like your hands were having spasms or something.”

Jane inwardly grimaced before mentally kicking herself. She had thought that she was getting better about not doing things like that in public.

“Um, no reason. It’s just that it’s been a long day even before I saw you just a little while ago in the computer lab and I guess that my hands are a little out of whack or something like that,” she lied and watched as he nodded after a moment.

After that, they continued in silence again until they finally made it to her house. Jane stopped the truck inside the garage and turned the ignition off before turning to face Isaac. “Well, here we are.”

Isaac nodded and she watched as he climbed out of his seat and out of the truck. She followed his example after a moment before she chuckled awkwardly as she saw him staring at the piles of junk in the garage.

“Yeah, sorry about that. My family’s always been a bunch of pack-rats when it comes to keeping things.”

“Don’t be sorry; my mom was the same way. She always had a habit of thinking that almost everything had some kind of sentimental value,” he replied.

Jane nodded her agreement as she walked up to the front door and unlocked it with her key, motioning for Isaac to follow her inside. As soon as she noticed his nod, she walked through the front door and went through her normal routine: kicking her old tennis shoes off, dropping her duster on a nearby chair, laying her fedora on the kitchen table, and grabbing a can of Mountain Dew out of the refrigerator. She popped the top and was just about to take a sip when she caught Isaac out of the corner of her eye. She watched as Isaac laid his trench coat on one of the chairs in the kitchen before taking off his motorcycle-style boots. Jane took a few sips from her drink as her eyes took in what Isaac had been wearing underneath that heavy coat: a pair of camouflage-shaded cargo pants and a brown hoodie that was in the process of being removed–leaving only a regular dark blue t-shirt underneath.

“So, are there any rules or anything like that I need to know?”

“Huh?” Jane asked as she realized that she had been staring.

“I asked if there’s any rules or anything that that I need to know about.”

“Oh. Well, besides the obvious ones: don’t blow up the house, don’t set the house on fire, and don’t do anything that would cause a federal investigation…I can’t think of anything else,” she replied as she stepped into the living room and collapsed into her favorite recliner as Isaac laughed a little at what she had said before suddenly becoming very quiet.

“Something wrong?”

“Does that say _‘in case of zombies’_?”

Jane glanced over at the glass case on the far wall that covered a Remington Model 8 rifle and an old Browning Buck Mark pistol before nodding as she got her phone out and began dialing her friend Nicole’s number. “Well, you never know. Science hasn’t completely ruled out the possibility yet.”


End file.
